Workers hit with recent funding freezes and firings involving the Department of Veterans Affairs said the recent tumult might result in more long-term damage than any short-term financial gains for the federal budget.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., noted that, as the daughter of a World War II Purple Heart recipient, the fight was personal.
“When I say we have a moral obligation to care for our veterans and their families, this is really personal to me,” she said Tuesday. “And when I hear that they now plan to fire over 80,000 more VA workers, you can bet I will not be quiet about this, because those staffing cuts are a benefit cut for our veterans.”
Murray hosted the virtual call with reporters as part of a continuing series featuring federal workers from the region affected by recent layoffs as part of widespread cuts instigated by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency.
DOGE was created via executive order Jan. 20 by Trump, and the White House has repeatedly defended the team’s work. In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity that aired Feb. 18, both President Trump and DOGE chief Elon Musk pushed back against their critics, with Musk stating, “They wouldn’t be complaining so much if we weren’t doing something useful ... .”
Christian Helfrich is a former research investigator with VA Puget Sound. He described the cuts as a multiyear setback for the VA.
“What’s going on right now isn’t a isn’t a two-way door where you can tear down the VA and then see what happens and if you don’t like it, go back to the way it was,” Helfrich said. “This is a one-way door. If we tear it down now, it is going to take years or decades to build back.”
A VA memorandum shared by the American Federation of Government Employees dated March 4 noted that the department’s initial objective is to return to its 2019 staffing levels, a reduction of more than 80,000 jobs.
“Additionally, a portion of the savings garnered will be reinvested in the veterans we serve and the systems required to support our workforce and execute our mission,” the memo stated.
During Tuesday’s news conference, a question was raised regarding critics charging that disabled workers with the department were not performing at acceptable levels or sometimes not even working.
“I myself am a disabled veteran. I was hired under a 10-point veteran preference, and I can speak to my particular logistics team at the VA Puget Sound,” said Future Zhou, Army veteran and former inventory-management specialist with VA Puget Sound.
“Veteran preference gets you in the door for an interview (but) does not get you the job,” she said. “You still have to be fully qualified to complete the tasks given in that position.”
Zhou lost her job via an emailed notice in February.
“We were almost 90% disabled veterans on our team,” Zhou said. “The firings directly targeted the probationary employees who are the young workforce coming in to replace our older veterans that are soon to retire, so there’s an immediate impact on the transfer of knowledge.”
Zhou added, “I was only there for seven months and I was already in charge of three critical functions in the hospital, and that speaks to my competence in my ability to do that job. And I was working with an excellent group of people. We were severely short-staffed and we were still completing our mission every single day to serve veterans.”
Murray also defended the veterans’ work, stating, “Anybody who can make a statement that crass and wrong has never taken 5 minutes themselves to walk through any veteran facility, veteran-provided care or talk to veterans themselves.”
Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, in a “Fox & Friends” interview Monday, stated, “I think it’s really interesting for me to take a look at an organization that’s grown rapidly but yet still has issues and still has problems taking care of our veterans.”
Collins, nominated by Trump and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, added that reaching the targeted reduction amount would be a “deliberative process that’s going to take some time, that’s going to include career VA employees.”
Examples shared Tuesday told of broad cuts and in some cases, complete reversals causing more uncertainty.
Wondering what’s next
Shawn Durnen is president of NineLine Veteran Services in Fife, a nonprofit that works with the VA offering mental health and business/employment opportunities. He said that his nonprofit was affected last month by frozen grant funding.
“I had to put in immediate freeze to our suicide-prevention program,” he said. “It caused an immediate overnight panic. We had people enrolled — we had people that were getting support services, case management ... all these things were compounding, and overnight, I literally had to lay off 60% of my staff just for our mental health division.”
Durnen said he then had to work on transferring his veteran client base to other sites.
“Then, that following Monday I get a call that says, ‘Yeah, we’re going to turn the funding stream back on.’”
He noted that the upheaval his nonprofit experienced last month is now hitting the VA directly.
Veterans he interacts with now, he said, tell him stories of losing their primary-care physician, seeing pharmacists cut and more.
“The reduction of force is going to cause those access points to have less of the services that have been supportive,” he said. “My question is, where does it stop?”
Dan Foster is an Army veteran and was a project manager supporting the Transition Assistance Program for the VA in Olympia.
“We were abruptly cut off along with 874 other contracts the week of Feb. 24 as part of DOGE actions,” he said. “That meant that myself and nearly a hundred others on our contract alone had about 12 hours’ notice that we were going to be without jobs.”
He noted that “a substantial number” of his colleagues were also veterans and had taken on the contract work to continue helping veterans and serving their country in a different role.
“And that opportunity has now been pretty unceremoniously ended, and we’re all kind of wondering what’s next,” he said.
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